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Sequestration of atmospheric carbon in forested lands offsets carbon emissions from other industries. Conversion of private lands, particularly agricultural tracts in marginal areas, to forests can bolster carbon abatement. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers voluntary, incentive-based programs to encourage landowners to adopt production practices with positive environmental outcomes. This policy can be used to increase transition from marginal agricultural land to forests, thereby creating new carbon sinks. We analyze an eleven-county study area in the Mississippi Delta region of Arkansas to determine feasibility for a subsidy focused on carbon abatement through afforestation. This study area is significant for two reasons: the long growing season and humid climate is ideal for fast growing trees such as loblolly pine, and groundwater depletion dynamics factor heavily into future optimal land use patterns. A spatially-explicit optimization model will determine the pattern of land use that maximizes discounted economic returns to landowners and explore responsiveness of optimal land use to government subsidies. The product of this effort, a marginal cost curve for carbon abatement, will assist policymakers in allocating limited resources to programs for greenhouse gas mitigation.

We address factors which may influence the adoption of flow meters and/or certain irrigation scheduling practices. Measuring irrigation flow enhances management of irrigation, which improve profits. It also serves as a useful tool in evaluating which conservation measures for irrigation to adopt. This enhanced management can come in the form of scheduling. While less sophisticated versions of it exist, newer, more scientific forms can lead to better efficiency of irrigation events. As groundwater supplies become more limited, the use of flow meters and/or efficient scheduling techniques will allow farmers to better manage water resources.

This study looks at the economic feasibility of Alternate Wet Drying (AWD) irrigation methods to address concerns of groundwater depletion and greenhouse gas (methane) emissions associated with rice production. AWD is an irrigation régime where the producer allows the rice field to dry intermittently during the rice life-cycle rather than having the field continuously submerged. In previous studies AWD has been found to reduce water usage by from 20-70% and to reduce methane emissions by over 50% as compared to rice produced under continuous flooding. However; the large disadvantage of AWD is that it is often times associated with a yield loss. Thus, this study sets out to estimate the economic viability of three types of AWD irrigation methods in Arkansas using test plot data. Data includes water usage, methane emissions and yields for three hybrid rice varieties across three years and three AWD methods. The goals of this study are to (1) estimate if any of the AWD methods demonstrate higher profitability than traditional flooding (2) introduce a carbon offset market to capture benefits of the GHG reduction, via methane, and estimate profitability between AWD and traditional flooding (3) introduce a water tax equivalent to the social cost of water and reestimate profitability of AWD and traditional flooding. These results will give producers as well as large rice buyers (MARS and Kelloggs) an idea of relative profitability and additional premiums necessary to switch to/source a more “sustainable” rice crop.

We model water use, aquifer recharge and producer returns over 30 years in three watersheds to determine impact of modified water cost and construction of reservoirs. To maintain groundwater resources, raising cost of pumped water by a buffer value to the aquifer resource and using surface storage looked most promising.

We evaluate how land use change and the value ecosystem services affect the decision to invest in public land acquisitions. Our application is for the state of Minnesota, and we consider the acquisitions by Department of Natural Resources over the last two decades. We calculate a return on investment (ROI) in conservation showing the increase in the value of ecosystem goods and services from public lands per dollar spent on acquisition. A spatially-explicit modeling tool, the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), quantifies how changes in land use and land cover (LULC) influence the provision and value of a suite of ecosystem services: carbon sequestration, timber production, water quality, habitat quality, and outdoor recreation. The present value of the difference in the value of ecosystem services from landscapes with and without acquisitions in 1992 and for the econometrically modeled future landscapes in 2022 and 2052 is the return from the investment in the acquisitions. We find a limited number of acquisitions have a ROI above one. Also, we observe the estimated return in the acquisitions is much more influenced by the economic value of ecosystem services than the projected development threat to the acquisitions.

Using county-level panel data, we estimate duration models to study the timing of rapid farmland conversion events. Results suggest that income and the proximity to major highways are the principal determinants of rapid conversion events (and also responsible for prolonging these events). In particular, an increase in income of 1% is found to hasten the time to a rapid conversion event by 111% and to extend the time back to a slow state of conversion by 76%. On the other hand, valuable agricultural land and high property taxes extend the time to a rapid conversion event (and also hasten the time back to a slow state of conversion). An increase in the value of agricultural production per acre extends the time to a rapid conversion event by 14% and hastens the time to a slow state of conversion by 106%. Knowledge about the timing of rapid farmland conversion will help counties to better predict infrastructure needs and take steps to mitigate the traffic and environmental impacts.

An individual's rate of time preference is an important consideration for individuals deciding whether to support a public good since the benefits of a public good often come in the future. Our study finds individual discount rates from a contingent valuation method (CVM) question where the time frame of the payment schedule is varied across surveys. We find discount rates similar to the rates found in the recent revealed preference and experimental literature of around 30%. Our CVM question addresses the preservation of additional open space adjacent to a large regional park at the urban fringe of Portland, Oregon.

The presence of open space on an economic landscape influences the area, density, and prices of residential development. We show that the kind of influence that open space has on urban form matters for planning and recreation goals. In our spatial city model residents prefer to live close to open space for the benefits of (1) recreation and (2) ambient amenities. Our findings suggest that the type of benefits offered by open space matter for the optimal proximity of open spaces to each other and the city center. We show that policies adjusting recreation benefits and costs are able to influence the urban form to achieve planning and recreation goals. Open space benefits influence the location pattern of income groups, and we show that high income groups locate away from open space if increases in income make housing demand rise faster than recreation demand.

The spatial arrangement of public open spaces in communities has an important influence on the recreational net benefits from those public open spaces. A prime example of a public open space in communities where spatial arrangement is important is parks. From the perspective of maximizing the net benefits of recreation, there is a tradeoff between placing all the land for parks in a single park and making several parks to reduce the travel costs of households to the parks. If several parks are made, then the amount of land in each park is reduced, and the recreational net benefit of a trip to any of the parks is less. Since recreation is an important source of value from parks, an examination of an optimal spatial arrangement of parks for recreation in a community is of interest to community planners. The community is assumed to be a slice of a larger urban area or a small town since the housing structure and socioeconomic characteristics of the community is assumed homogeneous. The demand for recreation trips to parks is shifted by the socioeconomic characteristics of the population and the size of the parks. The size of the parks is the division of the number of parks into the total amount of land in parks. The price of a trip to a park is the cost of a round trip to the park. The consumer surplus of a trip to a park is the net benefit the person receives from the park. The amount of land for parks and number of parks to maximize the net benefits from recreation is determined from the model of the demand for trips to a park. Comparative static results suggest that the optimal amount of land, number of parks, and the size of the parks depend on the socioeconomic characteristics of the city. Cities with higher populations, more income, and more education should have more land in parks, more parks, and the parks should be smaller. Lower travel costs and prices of land should result in more land in parks and more parks, but there should be no influence on the park size. Data are collected from seventy cities on the amount of land, size, and number of parks. The distances between the parks, distances of the parks from downtown, and other variables relevant to the spatial distribution of parks are also obtained. Data on the socioeconomic characteristics of the population, travel costs, and the price of land are collected for the cities. The same data is collected for each of the one hundred and sixty nine zip codes associated with the seventy cities. These zip codes are spatially smaller and may better represent homogeneous communities. Three equations are estimated to learn the influence of the socioeconomic and travel cost features of a city on the spatial distribution of parks. The three equations are the estimation of the amount of land, the number and the size of parks. The results of the estimation for the amount of land in parks equation match the theoretical predictions, and the fit of the relationship is good. Population, population density, and land price have a significant influence on the amount of land in parks. A larger population makes a city create more land in parks while population density and the price of land makes a city reduce the amount of land. The results of the estimation for the number and size of parks are less clear. The results match the comparative static predictions loosely, and the fit of the equations is not good. These findings may reflect incorrect assumptions on the preferences of people for park size in the theoretical model, or the data that the preferences are supposed to represent are clouded with noise from government regulations, costly removal of parks, and other features of the complexity of urban spatial structure. Although recreation is significant component of the value households derive from parks, there has been little attention paid to determining the spatial arrangement of parks to maximize the net benefits. The theoretical results suggest that the amount of land and the spatial distribution of parks should be sensitive to the socioeconomic characteristics of a community. However, only the predicted signs of the socioeconomic characteristic on the amount of land in parks hold up empirically. The spatial distribution of land is more sensitive to institutional factors that probably make it necessary to have more data on parks to fully identify the relationship between the socioeconomic characteristics and the number and size of parks.

Public open spaces around and within urban areas have been increasingly developed due to greater population pressures. My paper investigates if land around public open spaces is likely to get developed faster since households are attracted to the recreation value as well as the environmental amenities of the public open space. There has been inadequate attention in the literature to the influence of the different sources of value of open space on housing prices. While views of open space are certainly an important source of value to households, public open space is also valued because households enjoy recreation at the open space. Adopting the monocentric city model, simulations examine how the different sources of value of public open space influence the developed area, rent gradient and the development density of an urban area. The monocentric city model has residents competing for housing around a single central business district (CBD) while developers choose the density of development from the expected prices of the homes at that location in the city. Simulations of the closed city model result in equilibrium rent gradients for land and the housing, a utility level, and a city boundary. By referencing the monocentric city model with two-dimensional coordinates, Wu and Plantinga (2003) are able to more spatially explicitly examine the influence of amenities on the equilibrium state of the city. Amenities are shown to generate leap-frog development, influence the developed area of the city, the population density, rent gradients and location of different income groups. Although different shapes and areas of amenities are examined in their paper, there is no investigation of the proper proximity of these amenities to each other. Several small amenities dispersed far apart from each other in the city may result in less total amount of developed land than if there is only a single large amenity. Another reason that the proximity of amenities to each other matters is that the net benefits from recreation are influenced by the spatial arrangement of the amenities. Consumer´s surplus from recreation trips to the amenity is the net benefit of the amenity, with the price of a recreation trip including the travel cost to the amenity. The travel costs from recreation at amenities depend on how widely dispersed the amenities are in the city. While several amenities located widely throughout a city lower the travel costs of recreation, the city tends to diffuse more too resulting in a larger developed area. On the other hand, a single centrally located amenity contracts the city resulting in a smaller developed area although the travel costs of recreation rise slightly. Simulations from the model collect information on the aggregate amount of recreation trips, recreational net benefits, and the developed area. More localized benefits of amenities like nice views and cleaner air have a stronger influence on housing prices and development densities than the less localized benefits of amenities like recreation. If the travel costs for recreation are low, then only the localized benefits of amenities influence housing prices and development densities. However, if the demand for recreation and the travel costs to reach the amenity is high, the benefits of recreation have the potential to influence the housing prices and development densities in that area of the city. There are several potential solutions to the problem of recreation benefits of the amenities leading to the unwanted development of natural or agricultural land. The simplest solution is to regulate that no recreation take place at the amenity. Of course, the nice views and cleaner air may still draw development outward, and the enforcement of no recreation is necessary. Rather than prohibit recreation, raising user fees at recreation sites is a way to generate revenue for the city while simultaneously restraining sprawl. If the cost of travel to a recreation site is high, development is more likely near the site since households want the benefit of a trip without the high cost of travel to the site. If roads to the recreation site are improved to reduce the cost of travel, households will prefer to locate close to the central business district rather than the recreation site to reduce the cost of their daily commutes.

The gain from dividing parks into smaller pieces to reduce travel costs is weighed against the loss in services the parks provide since they are smaller. The optimal number of parks is dependent on whether travel costs are concentrated in parts of the town.